Doing the Laundry is Getting More Complicated

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As I was reading No Need for Words, http://www.mylot.com/post/3032731/no-need-for-words by @JudyEv I thought of this. It seems not all that long ago that when you bought clothes, the care instructions dealing with how to wash, dry, and iron came on a hanging tag that was easy to read in plain English. That was when most clothing I bought was made in America. Now the instructions are on tiny tags attached to the clothing it takes a magnifying glass to read. Some don't even have words -- just pictures that weren't clear to me. I had to look up their meanings on the internet. That's a lot to go through to discover how you need to care for each new item. Laundry instructions with or without symbols are not what they used to be a few years (or is it decades) ago. Labels told us whether to use hot, warm, or cold water, whether we needed to hand wash or use a machine, and which dryer and iron settings to use. It was assumed that people knew to wash light and dark colors separately. Since so many more clothes are imported than use to be and since so many new fabrics are in use, we now learn some garments should be washed wrong- side-out. Some things, like my steam mop heads, should be washed separately from anything but other steam mop heads. Sorting laundry and finding compatible clothes to wash in the same load is getting harder. Can I wash mop heads with dirty rags? Reasons why these instructions are important are left out of the instructions. Just as we can find fewer items that are compatible to go in a load, we are instructed by those who want us to conserve water and energy to always wash full loads. Right! Does this drive anyone else crazy, or at least, make you want to go back a few decades when more things could safely be washed together at the same temperature? These jeans, for example, are supposed to be washed in cold water with like colors, wrong-side-out. I didn't see the bit about wrong-side-out until I'd already washed them once right-side-out. It didn't seem to harm them any. Have you experienced any tag instructions after the fact that didn't seem to matter after all? Do you have any tips for making sure loads are compatible?